


Burner

by Claudia_flies



Series: Restless 'verse [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BBQs, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Dance parties, F/M, Families of Choice, Healing, Laura Barton is Clint's Sister, M/M, Missions, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Sequel, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Wakanda, multiple POVs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-23 01:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8307742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claudia_flies/pseuds/Claudia_flies
Summary: The burner phone three times. Sequel to Restless knots to untie





	1. Natasha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this took a lot longer than expected…. And oh my god, I wrote something not explicit… I should maybe go lie down now….
> 
> Thank you again for the lovely [Zilia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/zilia) for beta and for cheerleading and badgering and generally listening to my woeful moaning.

 

 

The phone picks up on the sixth ring.

“Hello.”

Steve sounds gruff and so much like himself that Natasha wants to weep. Not that she does, but the desire is there, deep in the pit of her stomach.

“Clint’s family’s been compromised. We need an extraction for Laura and the kids.”

Her voice is steady, toneless, almost hard. Clint’s little niece and nephews. They’ve lost their father so recently, now faced with losing their home all over again. Because of the Avengers. Because of Tony. Because of her, of what she chose.

She hears the sharp inhale on the other side through the static of the cheap phone and long-distance lines.

“Nat… How?”

“Tony talked about them in the Raft. They have it on tape. They came to the house.”

She wants to not sound bitter, but barely succeeds. She’s slipping like an amateur, letting things get to her. Steve says something away from the phone, the sound muffled. Maybe he is pressing the phone to his chest. There is a level of comfort Natasha takes from that mental image until Steve speaks again.

“Where are you?”

“At a safe house in Boyse.”

Steve doesn’t ask if everyone is okay. He doesn’t need to, and for that Natasha is grateful.

She can hear other voices through the line now, people near him and she wants to ask. Wants to know if Sam is there. If he is okay. She hears Wanda’s melodious voice getting closer, asking who it is, she hears Steve answering.

“Alright, what do you need?”

It all happens quickly after that.

The old quinjet still in the warehouse near the Canadian border, just waiting for her. A covert flight path below radar, a Wakandan escort flying them all the way to Central from the west coast of Africa.

Clint is still on the phone with Scott while they load onto the jet in the pitch black of early morning. Giving everyone a blow-by-blow of the conversation.

“Uhu, yeah, yeah…” Clint looks up from the phone, hisses to everyone “Hope’s really pissed.” Returning nonchalant to the phone. “Nothing, my man, nothing… yeah uhuh.” Then turning again to everyone while Scott speaks, voice tinny from the phone “They’re all okay. Pym’s covering it.”

Surprisingly, Hank Pym still has some contacts within the State Department willing to fudge some paperwork for an old friend, and suddenly Scott, and by extension Cassie and his ex-wife, are all scot free.

Natasha smiles grimly at the little pun while running the final pre-flight checks.

Cooper sits silently on the co-pilot’s seat not saying a word, his eye tracking Natasha’s hands as she works. He hasn’t said a lot since they had been forced to evacuate from the farm. Lila had screamed and cried and laid on the ground, and after in the footwell of the car, but Cooper has just been silent.

The jet hums and whines low around her. It’s an older model, no longer in use but still runs like a charm. They all run like a charm for Natasha.

Clint moves Cooper to the back to sit with his sister and Laura, strapping everyone in. Finally, he takes the now-free seat next to her. They don’t say anything, the whine of the starting engines filling the silence in between. She hears Nathaniel starting to cry as they take off. It’s his first flight and she can faintly hear Lila trying to show him how to swallow and pop his ears.

The flight over is long and dull, all the way until a formation of Wakandan fighter jets meets them and escorts them over the continent. Cooper won’t leave the cockpit, sitting on Clint’s lap, strapped into his harness, his eyes tight and sharp on the jets escorting them.

They are met by an army of Wakandan officials at the airfield who run the Barton family through a rigorous asylum process in only a few hours.

She and Clint wait out in an empty beige hallway. Sitting slouched on the uncomfortable chairs that all government agencies seem to have and not speaking. Neither of them needs to be processed, both of them already having been declared welcome by King T’Challa as his allies. The silence between them now stretched too far for either of them to break it.

The convoy of blacked-out SUVs take them through the thick jungle, down dirt track roads to a large compound, stopping in front of a two-storey house at the edge of the fencing. Tall lush trees grown by the front porch; the gnarled and low hanging branches make Cooper sit up straighter in his seat, interest sparkling in his eyes.

The house has already been marked for Laura and the kids, furnished sparingly but with a box of toys and some toddler essentials when they get inside.

Natasha leaves the room when Laura starts to cry, curling into her brother’s chest, hiding her face as if she could hide from the world, hide from what has happened to them all. She’s not sure if it’s relief or grief. She wouldn't know the difference anyhow.

She goes outside and stands in the hazy morning sunshine, not used to the warmth yet. One of the drivers offers to take her to the main site “to be with her team,” and without looking back she gets into the car.

They leave her at the entrance of a large four-storey structure. There is something familiar in its size and scope to the Avengers compound, but the architecture is totally different. It sits comfortably within its jungle setting, strangely blending in and standing out from the environment at the same time.

The entrance hall is beautiful, like that of a well-appointed home or a luxury hotel masquerading as a residence. She makes her way down the corridor on her left just by instinc. Coming into a large sunlit room. Something loosens in the pit of her stomach at the sight of Steve’s wide shoulders hunched over the table. The familiar sight of him slowly eating while reading something off his tablet with the little frown between his brows.

“Steve?”

He turns and rises like an Atlas moving, always strangely graceful in that big body of his. Folds her into a hug without asking, more welcoming and open than he had been in the church. Like something's been shaken loose but she can’t place what. It niggles at her like a splinter under a fingernail.

“Nat.”

Just that. Just her name, tinged with _relief_ and _love_ and _family_ and all those things that she doesn’t think she’ll ever be worthy of. It’s because of that voice, the specific timber of hope that he has, that she changed her mind. Went against her own best interests. Turncoat and double agent, but now only for him.

He walks her to the table and makes her a breakfast plate. Eggs and sausages, a slice of fresh bread and dark, dark bitter coffee. The food sits heavy in her stomach, grounding and finally making the day seem real. He gives her space, returning to his tablet, eyes scanning the text again. The silence stretches between them, long and slow. Natasha watches as the long lines of the sun fill the room properly now, ushering in the day.

Wanda walks in maybe an hour later and Natasha finally allows herself to feel how much she’s missed her, missed them all. Steve shoots up from his chair like there’s a fire under his ass, making the wood screech against the floor in his haste.

“He’s out?”

Wanda smiles and nods. She’s wearing navy blue scrubs and sneakers, and her hair is, unusually, up in a messy bun.

“Yeah, in recovery. Still a bit loopy, but he’d probably appreciate some breakfast.”

Steve fusses around the table and starts to fill a tray with everything laid out on the breakfast buffet. Poking at the food, sniffing things, suddenly picky. He builds huge food mountains on plates. Feeding a supersoldier. Definitely Barnes then.

“Oooh, he loves these.”

He’s filling a plate with some kind of deep-fried dough bundles to the brim, and Wanda grins like Cheshire cat. It’s warm and open, and Natasha has never seen her look quite like that. She helps herself to something gooey and brown that looks suspiciously like oatmeal and Natasha wrinkles her nose at it. Her voice has a warm timbre as she smiles at the mountain of food Steve is holding aloft.

“That’s why Nana makes them, you know.”

Steve pops one of the fried parcels in his mouth and smiles wide around the treat, bulging his cheeks out. Playful and so unlike himself. No, not unlike. Natasha did know this Steve in D.C. for a while, the playful and gentle side of him. It was after Sokovia that he changed, the weight of leadership and responsibility.

They way he dresses here and now, t-shirt and cargo shorts, looks so strange on him. Strange but good, younger and carefree; she has to admit it looks nice on him.

After Steve leaves Wanda turns to her, picking at her oatmeal.

“Bucky’s second surgery was today.”

“Surgery…?”

“For the arm. Do you remember the issues they had with Steve?”

Natasha nods and shudders at the memory. She’d been in the gallery, watching as he jolted awake with a tube down his throat. Shaking and fighting the intubation, the doctors, the terror in his muffled screams.

“Well, it’s the same thing with Bucky.”

Natasha has no warm feelings towards Barnes, but she wouldn’t wish that on her worst enemy. Well, that’s a lie, maybe to her worst enemy, but Barnes is not on that particular list.

“I go in his head, keep him asleep, and he takes me dancing.”

Natasha knows that Wanda’s avoided neural interfacing after joining the Avengers, a part of her powers that she was always reluctant to use. Skittish and scared of herself even before Lagos.

“What’s it like?”

She means the neural interfacing, but Wanda takes the question differently, probably on purpose.

“Really fun. He taught me how to do the Lindy. Brooklyn dance-halls in the early 40s.”

Natasha can’t imagine Barnes letting anyone in his head voluntarily. Not after Hydra, not after everything that happened in Berlin. Unless…

“You took out the triggers.”

Wanda shrugs like it’s nothing, nibbling her oatmeal, but there is an undercurrent of pride there, hidden in the folds of her face.

“Technically no, but in practical terms yes. They don’t affect him anymore.”

“How?”

As soon as the word is out of her mouth she realizes how stupid the question is and Wanda just shrugs again, careless, but Natasha knows better.

“Just changed a memory, broke the chain.”

Wanda eats her breakfast, or maybe it’s lunch for her considering how long she’s already been awake. Twirling in a Brooklyn dance hall. Natasha remembers how real it felt, the nightmare, the vision, whatever you want to call it. She wonders if it’s same for her or if she exerts more control over it.

The soft voice next to her jolts Natasha out of her thoughts and she curses herself for such reckless idling.

“Come on, I’ll show you where we’re all staying. You can pick an apartment.”

Wanda doesn’t comment on her lapse of concentration, just slides out of the room and down another corridor.

“Me and Sam are on the west side. Steve and Bucky have the large one in the north corner.”

There is something in Wanda’s tone, a suggestion she is waiting for Natasha to pick up on.

“They live together?”

She tilts her head, looks at Natasha with a glimmer of mirth.

“I’d never thought that I would know something before you. Even with all my gifts.”

“They’re together _together_.”

She makes a complex hand motion that is quite eloquent.

 _Even when I had nothing I had Bucky_.

It explains a lot actually, and Natasha is angry at herself for not seeing it before. Why hadn’t Steve said anything? Wanda’s smile stays gentle, and it’s like she’s reading her.

“Don’t be upset at him. It was a secret until quite recently. It’s new to them too.”

“What happened?”

It’s a clumsy question and so unlike her.

“Not my story to tell. Just ask Steve, he’ll talk your ear off about it.”

And she accepts that. Silent in her acquiescence. Wanda takes her to the guest wing. She looks at the suite doors for a moment, her head cocked to the side like she’s listening to something only she can hear. It is only after she has left and Natasha walks into the suite assigned to her that she understands why.

Clint is sitting by the small seating area. Waiting. For her. The silence between them finally stretched to a breaking point. His voice is rough when he finally speaks, looking straight at her, inside of her in the way that only he knows how.

“I did nothing after Loki. When Laura was widowed I did nothing. I always think I have time. I’m done waiting this time. I’m done letting you put the team and the mission before everything else.”

He takes her face between his palms and kisses her. It’s not gentle or sweet. Straight to hungry and desperate and Natasha gives herself over to it in ways that she would never with anyone else. No one else who knows the core of her, who's seen her ledger, dripping red and ugly. And he doesn’t care.

It’s not like she’s never thought of this before. She has, they both have. Those long shared looks, the intangible _thing_ always taking space between them, something that they have both refused to name for their own reasons. Sometimes she had wondered what it would take to break that strange accord of silence they’ve held for years and years. She’s never imagined it would be this.

She moans into Clint’s mouth, tries to devour him in her endless hunger. The first time is rushed and rough, most of their clothing still on and Clint mouths the arrow necklace over her clavicle like a sacrament.

The second time is calmer: they manage to actually strip each other, hands mapping the scars they are already intimately acquainted with on each other's bodies.

The third time is in the shower. She cries because the water hides it, but Clint notices anyway. Kisses her closed eyelids and cheeks and her tight closed mouth until she lets go. It’s cleansing, trusting him with this too.

They don’t leave the suite all day and night, too wrapped up in each other and making up for all the time they have willfully wasted apart. But maybe it was always meant to be this way, maybe they weren’t ready before, would not have valued it as much. Or maybe she is giving herself excuses.

Waking up even before the first light, her body done with sleep and alert. She leaves Clint sleeping, his face smushed into a pillow. Tiny hitched snores as he breathes.

She goes outside still in her pajamas, feeling strangely safe here. There is still a cool breeze over the veranda before the heat of the new day wipes it away. Steve runs up the stairs and stops by her, leaning over the railing next to her. Both of them quiet, listening to the stillness of the compound, the low rustling of animals in the jungle, some probably disturbed by Steve’s run.

She can feel it in the air before he speaks, the indrawn breath and straightening of his spine.

“What you said about staying together…”

He’s wrong, he’s so wrong, and she needs for him to understand that.

“No, it matters. The way, the how, it does matter.”

“Nat…”

He is trying to shoulder the blame, she can hear it in his voice, see it in his posture, shoulders up and ready for a fight. She doesn’t want that. Instead, she tells him the truth. It’s still shocking, so alien to do that. To break herself open like the shell of an egg, fragile and silly.

“I get that now, sometimes things have to change, for good or bad. And there is a lot of the good here, for both you and me.”

“Lots of bad too.”

His voice hitches at the end and she wonders what he is thinking of, if it’s Barnes.

“There's always gonna be bad, Steve. I guess in the past few years I lost sight of that. I stopped fighting for the good, stopped wanting it, got too scared of the bad stuff. I got too good at toeing the company line. What Barnes...what Bucky means to you, it's worth fighting for. Family, connection…love.”

Steve blushes, high on his cheekbones, and for once the sentiment is true. It’s rare for her to be honest, to not believe her own lies. Steve stumbles over his words, awkward and strangely endearing at the same time.

“It wasn't...I mean, it's pretty new.”

“Yeah, Wanda said as much.”

And then she can’t help but smirk, bring out that old playfulness between them that time and responsibility seems to have eroded away.

“So you gonna tell me about your new boyfriend, Rogers?”

“Oh I don't know, Romanoff, you gonna tell me about yours?”

She’s missed sassy Steve, and she's immensely glad he's back.

“Well snipers are very attractive, I have to admit that.”

Steve laughs, a full sound, deep from his belly. He's happy. Deserves to be happy more than any of them.

They part ways in the hall, her returning to her suite and Steve to his apartment, to Bucky still recovering from yesterday.

In the evening the team throws a big BBQ for Clint and Laura and the kids, even if it's apparently a regular Friday night dinner around here. It seems that none of them can let go of some traditions.

Huge piles of meat and vegetables and potatoes are piled on the industrial-sized wood-burning grill. Bowls of hot and cold salads appear on the side tables with bottles of local wine and beers, and carafes of sweet juices for the kids.

Steve's eating habits were always a running joke among the Avengers, but now suddenly there are two of them. Squabbling over the food, more like two children than the actual children present. Shoving and pushing each other, stealing food from each other’s plates.

“Did you just steal my potato, you punk?”

“You snooze you lose!” Steve shouts while shoving an entire, stolen, baked potato into his mouth.

“I only have one arm!”

Bucky shoves him halfway off the bench, showing that the lack of arm in no way impedes his ability to defend his food. Steve just chews with his mouth open, obscene and smiling.

“Uhu, if you can’t defend your potatoes they’re fair game, Mr. Internationally-Wanted Super-Assassin.”

Bucky skewers a steak off Steve’s plate in retaliation, and Steve looks at the piece of meat mournfully as Bucky eats it off the fork in four bites like an animal.

“Why do you not have an arm?”

For a moment everyone freezes. Lila stands by the low bench Bucky and Steve have been sitting and fighting on. Laura is next to her in a flash, it’s like a strange mom-superpower she has.

“Sweetie, that's a rude thing to ask.”

Bucky swallows, half of the steak still held aloft. It’s a slow, painful motion of his throat but his voice is soft when he speaks.

“It's alright, it's good to be curious. I…I was in an accident, I fell from a train and lost my arm.”

Lila looks at the stump, curious and head cocked to the side.

“Did it hurt?”

“Yeah, it hurt a lot.”

She wobbles up onto her tippy toes and places a small kiss on the stump.

“My mommy says kisses make hurt better.”

His voice wavers, but he still smiles at the little girl.

“They do. Thank you.”

“Come on sweetie, let Mr. Barnes eat now.”

He smiles at Laura, small and vulnerable, and she smiles back. Trusting him with her child. There is a glint in Steve’s eye that’s not just from the smoke of the fire.

When Bucky is not looking, he moves two more potatoes onto his plate, heaps on sour cream and cheese. Bucky doesn’t say anything when he notices the potatoes, just eats them, looking at Steve from the corner of his eye.

After everyone else has gone to sleep, she and Clint sit by the dying embers of the fire pit. The jungle is hot and humid around them, breathing like the lungs of the world.

Clint doesn’t touch her, not here, not out in the open, and she’s grateful that he understands.

She once said that love is for children. Believed it too. Still believes it in some way. But maybe love can be for her too now.

The silence between them is different now, textured and comfortable. The strangeness of forgiveness and healing that she is slowly letting herself get used to.


	2. Pepper

Her hands shake when she picks up the little black phone. It’s hidden in the bottom drawer of one of Tony’s many desks in the workshop. There is only one number saved to the contracts. It rings for a long time until a grumbled voice answers:

“Yeah, hi. Sorry.”

And Pepper realizes that in her panic she didn’t even check what time it’s in Wakanda. Or Maybe Steve isn’t even in Wakanda. How rude of her, she thinks hysterically. 

“Steve? It’s Pepper.”

She’s proud of how steady her voice sounds. Trained by all those conference calls and Obadiah Stane looming over her, ready to kill.

“Pepper! Oh hi, Pepper!”

He still sounds sleepy, yawning through her name.

“It’s Tony.”

Then the sob finally breaks free. It had been routine, a boring fly-by, Tony had complained as he passed her in the office seven days ago. Then he’d been shot down. Caught in some kind of energy beam.

“They’re not doing anything. Just debating and I can don’t… I can’t… I don’t know what to do.”

“It’s okay Pepper, it’s going to be okay.”

He’s fully awake now and she hears a few grunts and “Buck. Bucky, come on, let go, get up. Jesus!” with the sort of exasperated tenderness she’s never heard from Steve.

“Tell me what you know.”

She does, and Steve never puts the phone down, not when he calls T’Challa or wakes up Sam. Pepper hears it all faintly through the choppy line of the burner phone.

“Okay Pepper, take the Stark private jet here. T’Challa is going to arrange a diplomatic visa for you. Get your pilot to fly to Central and the air traffic control will guide you to the correct airfield.”

She’s shoving things into a duffle bag as Steve speaks, the panic rising and ebbing in her like a tide. She doesn’t call Rhodey. She understands his beliefs but can’t share them, can’t trust the system with the same conviction he does. She understands where he comes from, the structure, the unyielding faith in the military machinery.

“Just wait Pepper, they will let Vision go to rescue him. Just be patient.”

That had been four days ago. Four days and a video of Tony screaming like he’s being cut open. So, she’s done waiting.

Happy drives her to Teterboro with uncharacteristic silence and a grim set to his shoulders. The round, black case rests next to her on the seat, taking more space than it should, like a strange aura. She’d seen it in the corner of the workshop, covered up and left. No one had tried to stop her from taking it;it is still her company after all.

She tries not to cry on the flight over, concentrates on that quarter's financial reporting. The numbers dance in front of her eyes and the only thing she sees is Tony’s face, pale and still, eyes wide and not blinking.

The private jet lands smoothly as always and taxies to a private hangar at the edge of the airfield. Two blacked-out SUVs stand in wait as the staff lower the exit ramp. The heat slams into her like a pushed-out breath, making her blouse cling to her back.

Steve is there, waiting with T’Challa, dressed in a combat suit not unlike the one he wore with the Avengers, but this one is black, a dark silver star over his chest. His face is pinched, worried.

She’s angry and relieved and scared and her body feeling out of control. She slaps him as soon as she’s within range. Probably not that hard for a super soldier, but her hand stings from the impact and a blush springs high on Steve’s cheeks.

“I guess I deserved that.”

And then she is hugging him and crying because Steve is still a family of sorts and right now her only hope. He holds her gently, carefully even with all his strength and the wide expanse of his arms.

“It’s gonna be okay, Pepper. We’ll get him back for you.”

For some reason, Steve’s unyielding faith is easier to bear, the way he carries it, the way it infects everyone around him.

Her staff bring out the luggage and the round, black case. It sits on the tarmac as inconspicuous as it was in the car. She zips it open and pulls out the shield. It’s heavy and solid in her hands, the weight of it suited for the gravitas of the moment. Steve looks at it with a mixture of hunger and fear.

“I think that this belongs to you.”

“I don’t think that Tony would share that sentiment.”

He doesn’t take it, just balls his hands into fists by his side. His voice cracks with emotion and Pepper’s heart hurts for the both of them.

“Tony isn’t here.”

He doesn’t say anything, looking away from her and the shield with effort.

“I need you to take the shield, Steve. Please.”

He stays still for a long considering moment before reaching out and taking the shield from Pepper carefully with both hands, like something sacred. Straps it to his back with practiced ease.

T’Challa watches the exchange with an unreadable expression, until he steps forward.

“Ms. Potts, it is an honor to meet you. I only wish it could have been under better circumstances.”

“Thank you, your highness, for opening your country, your home, for me. For helping me.”

He just nods, silent and enigmatic, leading her towards the waiting cars. They are driven to what Pepper assumes to be some kind of a military base, through reinforced doors and down several floors.

Barnes is there, his long hair in a New York hipster man-bun, wearing the same combat suit as Steve, sans the star and a left sleeve, revealing a sleek, dark gray arm. A white insignia of the wings that Steve always had on his cowl etched into the shoulder. The plates shifting and moving silently as he straps a variety of guns and knives onto his person.

She feels her stomach drop. This is the man who killed Tony’s parents. Who caused it all.

Wanda sits on the table next to him, also dressed all in black. Tight long-sleeved shirt and combat trousers. Her fingers moving nimbly through her long hair as she braids it. 

Barnes throws her a kevlar vest from the array of combat gear laid out on the table.

“Oh come on Bucky, it squashes my boobs.”

“A round from a 9mm will squash a lot more, so put it on.”

“I can...”

“... move objects with your mind, yeah we all know. Just put on the kevlar, Jitterbug.”

She straps it on with a wry smile.

“You’re worse than Pietro, you know.”

“Well, I’m older.”

She pokes her tongue out at him and he laughs, bright and free, and Pepper has never seen Wanda like this.

Natasha walks in, making a beeline towards Barnes and the weapons desk until she sees Pepper in the corner of the room and changes course. Her familiar catsuit and stingers make Pepper smile as she makes her way over. 

She hugs Pepper with such gentle care, and Pepper fights to hold in her sobs. She has missed all of them during her separation from Tony, but Natasha in particular. There has always been a deeper friendship there, the lone women around whom all these powerful men gravitate. Suddenly Sam’s voice cuts through the room, breaking the moment.

“Yo, hipster man-bun!”

He throws some kind of stress ball or a squeaky toy at Barnes. It bounces off his shoulder and in return, he gives Sam the finger. The exchange is so strange, so ludicrous and Natasha rolls her eyes as if something like it happens all the time. When Sam turns around back to the screens Barnes throws the ball, hitting him squarely in the back of the head.

Sam shouts “asshole!” without even looking up and Natasha sighs. 

“They are worse than Laura’s kids, you know.”

Pepper smiles, but it’s thin and worn on her face. It’s not that she wants to be rude, but she just doesn’t have it in her to care about anyone else right now.

“Who is going?”

Natasha seems to sense the thin veneer of Pepper’s politeness, and her voice gets that steady corporate edge that was more Natalie Rushman than any other of her covers.

“It’s going to be Cap, Bucky, and Wanda. I’m going to pilot the jet, drop them off below radar and doing the extraction once they have Tony.”

She touches Pepper’s arm, soft like a feather but comforting.

“You get the big guns, Pep.”

Her voice comes out more hesitant than she means it to.

“Is that a…. wise choice?”

Natasha tilts her head, instantly knowing what she is referring to in that frightening way of hers.

“Wanda is the best and biggest firepower we have and she’s the only one who can take out the generators without a larger team. Bucky won’t let her go without him, and Cap goes where Bucky goes.”

“Last time… It didn’t end well.”

“I know. This is the best we can come up with, but you should know that no one questioned going in. It was always a discussion of how, not if.”

Pepper squeezes her hands together, unhappy. She doesn’t want a repeat of Siberia, but this is her only choice, her last chance and she doesn’t want to seem ungrateful.

“Steve, grenades?”

Barnes shouts across the room, holding up a string of, yes, grenades. Steve shrugs in response. Looking at the base layout on the massive screen dominating one of the walls.

“Looks pretty heavily guarded. Yeah, go for it.”

Barnes smiles wolfishly and starts strapping them on. Maybe she should try and see Barnes’ delight in the mission as a positive, a way for making amends. He is going in to rescue a man who tried to kill him, after all.

Wanda is attaching a thin collar around her throat and loops the connected set of plastic, see-through earbuds in her ears. Her whole uniform looks so different from her time with the Avengers. Natasha nods towards her as Wanda fiddles with the earbuds, getting them comfortable.

“She got taken out in Germany by a soundwave, so now she has a headset and vocal recognition to stop something like that happening again. She’s been working on combat neural interfacing with both Bucky and Steve. That’s part of the reason they are all going.”

“Neural interfacing…?”

Pepper knows of her powers to an extent, but Tony or the rest of the team had never been particularly comfortable talking about Wanda’s abilities and Pepper had never gotten to know the girl personally.

“They talk to each other telepathically. Well, Wanda does, and both Steve and Bucky communicate with her quite well like that now.”

Natasha makes a face, a wry twist to her lips in admitting something that she can’t do.

“I tried it, but it’s just too freaky, and it just didn’t take with Sam.”

She leaves Pepper with a final squeeze of her elbow, going to Barnes and Wanda, strapping guns and knives into the multitude of hiding places her combat suit seems to have.

Pepper feels useless, superfluous, sitting in the corner of the room as Sam, Clint and T’Challa take their seats by the comms board, hooking up video feeds and completing final mission prep. She’s always stayed away from the combat side of the Avengers, had ultimately wanted Tony to quit.

She tries to stop herself thinking about that, about that specific fight after which she had packed her bags and left. Those hurtful words that they had hurled to each other, wounding each other in a way that only people in love can. And then, and then she hadn’t seen Tony until after Siberia, until everything had fallen apart.

Natasha’s voice crackles through her headset and into the room, jolting her from her dark thoughts, pulling her back into the room and into the view of the horizon outside the jet blown up on the screen. Domed like the edge of the world, and it feels like that, like she is about the hurl herself off the edge into the unknown. 

“We’re coming to the drop zone.”

Pepper can see the ramp lowering as the video feed changes over, the dark night beyond the plane. Steve and Barnes walk to the edge and jump out like mirror images of each other. Wanda follows only seconds later, red flashing around her like lightning.

Sam changes the camera feeds from the jet to the ones on their visors. At first, it’s just dark night, water droplets and the edges of Steve’s and Barnes’ falling forms in Wanda’s. The red curling around the diving men. Then pinpricks of light in the distance, the base suddenly visible. Sam adjusts the calculations, numbers counting down at a ridiculous speed.

“Wanda, you’re coming to 500 feet. Start breaking now.”

A bright flash of red and a jolt in the cameras. Tendrils like ghostly fingers wrapping themselves around Steve and Barnes tighter and tighter. Pepper’s eyes keep going to the shield, to the bright start in the middle like a bullseye. She wonders if they all look to him like that, like a guiding star, their true north, and not for the first time she wonders how they could have all let it fall apart to terribly.

Both Steve and Barnes crash and roll to the ground in the dark.

“Sorry, sorry guys!”

“No harm done, Jitterbug,” but Barnes does sound breathless for a moment.

Sam divides the feeds from the visors into three sections of the screen. Wanda, Steve, and Barnes, the names in white in the bottom left corner of each.

The video feeds bounce and shake as the team runs across the landing strip in the dark. The emergency access doors are heavily fortified and open outwards. Barnes’ metal fist sinks into the steel like butter, making a Wanda-sized hole in no time. The pained croak of steel and concrete as she pushes the doors open from the inside, letting Steve and Barnes sneak in. Then they split up.

It’s a long twenty minutes of dark, endless hallways. Blood and the grind of bone and cartilage as Barnes kills a security team who find him. A brief flash of that bright, bright star on Wanda’s visor as she and Steve cross paths on one of the lower levels of the base. Then it happens, a low rumble through the speakers, like something unspeakable rolling within the earth’s crust.

“They’re frying the generators!” Wanda’s breathless yell echoes through the room and Pepper shivers, the fear that’s been curling within her for days now climbing into her throat and taking her voice and breath with it.

Wanda’s running, the camera shaking and rolling with her. The red tendrils fattening and coiling around her like snakes, puffing, and coursing, growing. There is a beat to like, like a breath or a heartbeat.

And then she is there, in that wide open room from the video that started it all, with the slab and Tony in the middle of it. He is pale and unmoving even through the red haze. The last thing Pepper sees is Wanda leaping across the room, shielding Tony with her body and a bright, fiery flash of red. Then the cameras go out.

“Wanda! Wanda, come in!”

“Steve! Steve, do you copy?”

“Barnes! Anyone on the line?”

There is nothing, just static answers them. Natasha’s voice comes online, hovering somewhere far above, waiting.

“Sam, what happened?”

Sam’s voice is tight, professional. There is something of Rhodey in him, that career military and the knowledge of how to keep his cool.

“They blew the generators. Get to the site now.”

It’s the longest seven minutes of Pepper’s life. Longer than being trapped in that frame, longer than waiting for those plane doors to open, knowing Tony was on the other side. Longer than falling, watching Tony’s hand grow distant. The lifeline that she missed. They are all watching the plume of smoke visible even in the night air in the cameras of the quinjet.

Then suddenly a voice cuts through the static.

“Nat! Nat, do you copy? We need extraction.”

Steve sounds out of breath, but alive.

“Wanda’s got Tony, but she’s wiped, we can’t keep cover for long.”

Barnes. Rough, like he’s been breathing in smoke.

Natasha lands the jet among the rubble, and the loading bay cameras finally pulling their little, huddled group into focus. Tony, unconscious and held tightly between Steve and Barnes and Wanda limping in behind them. He hair in a wild disarray, thick strands escaped from the braid.

They attach the EEG leads to Tony’s chest and the screen is suddenly filled with his vitals. Pepper looks at the steady beat of the heart beat and finally allows herself to breathe.


	3. Tony

He’d looked into the Hydra files after Siberia, with purpose and conviction. Find a weakness. Find anything he could use. Instead, Friday found the videos. Thirty-seven minutes of footage. Clinical and sharp. The process. The chair. The wipe. The hose. He got through fourteen and a half minutes before he vomited. Didn’t even make it to the bin by his desk.

Now he’s in Wakanda. Watching Barnes gyrating against Wanda, wiggling as she slaps him on the hip, the deep base of the music pulsing through the room.

“Twerk it, Sergeant!”

It’s such a strange juxtaposition, and that fucking vibranium arm. Tony’s pretty sure that T’Challa had just created it to spite him. Fucking show-off that he is.

Barnes spins Wanda around, metal fingers guiding her palm like a delicate instrument. She looks different too, looser and freer the way she moves to the music, the way she sings _“that girl is so dangerous, that girl is a bad girl”_.

Tony hadn’t recognized her at first, not with the black military gear and her hair away from her face. She’d been rushing to him, the generator shaking beneath them like a monster from the deep. He remembers her body over his, the tension in her limbs and the red dome around them. The fire and destruction outside as the base blew.

He had been able to feel the power in her. Crackling around them, red and menacing like nothing before.

She’d kept it out, a ten megaton explosion held at bay. Saved his life like it had been nothing. After that, it’s all blackness.

He hadn't come to until he was in the quinjet, woken by the strangely comforting hum of the older model.

He’d turned around to see Wanda and Steve and Barnes sitting on the floor of the jet. Barnes and Cap shoving runner’s gels and protein bars into their mouths like it was a pie-eating competition at a county fair. Wanda hoarding the lime-flavored gels by her feet, slowly slurping them from their little cups.

He doesn’t even notice Steve until his voice carries across the room from the stairs. There is a crooked smile on his face.

“Should I be worried here?”

Worried about Wanda and Barnes gyrating against each other in the middle of the night. Yes. Yes, he should.

But instead of stopping or springing apart, Barnes twirls Wanda around one more time, though his gaze remains on Steve. He has some serious swag as he struts across the floor. Pulling Steve down the last few steps of the stairs, his hands sliding around Steve’s waist, pulling him in tight to his body.

“Oh, that’s how it is?”

Steve’s smiling, dopey and happy. His wide, white teeth brilliant even in the low light. Barnes smiles like a wolf with a prey.

“Yup, today’s the day Steve Rogers will learn to grind.”

He slots his thigh between Steve’s legs and his hands come down to grasp Steve’s ass. And then Barnes sings, low and guttural _“that girl is a bad girl”_ and Steve blushes scarlet.

It kind of explains a lot.

Here’s Captain America, getting down with his honey after defying the American Government, the UN and half of the Avengers. And then they’re kissing with quite a lot of tongue, dirty and slick like they’re in a seedy club in Hell’s Kitchen.

He hates both Cap and Barnes in that moment. More out of envy than any left-over feeling from the Accords. It’s not like he and Pepper are back together, no matter what the tabloids would have you believe.

And it’s not fair. Life should be fair, at least fair towards Tony.

Wanda twirls on her own, performing a complex body roll that Tony swears requires magic. His maudlin thoughts are suddenly rudely interrupted by:

“You guys having a dance party and you did not invite the Falcon!?”

Wilson shimmies down the stairs sideways, sliding across the floor with socked feet to Wanda, jumping straight in like he knows the lyrics by heart:

_“No no, no disrespect but this gyal a pon another level, cut the check, uh!”_

He looks ridiculous dancing in red checkered pajamas and a t-shirt that proclaims _I heart doughnuts_. But Wanda doesn’t seem to mind his singing or his offensive t-shirt. Instead, they body check each other and perform a coordinated hip-roll so much in sync it must be practiced.

Barnes and Cap are yet to come up for air from each other’s mouths.

“Seriously? This is what you guys do here?”

Natasha is looking unimpressed where she’s leaning against the second-floor landing, but Clint has a sneaky gleam in his eye behind her.

They both came out of the same suite. Together. In their pajamas. Clearly, this whole compound is some kind of magical love shack. Maybe he should suggest to Pepper to holiday here for a while. He has now defied the American Government after all, and thus should be entitled to get down with a honey of his own.

Not that he’d ever say that to Pepper. Ever. He values his balls after all. But getting down with a honey looks like fun. His whole team is doing it and now Tony just feels left out even worse.

Suddenly Clint’s sneaking around Natasha and he’s grabbing her around her knees and lifting her over his shoulder in one smooth throw.

“Clint, what the fuck! Clint!”

She could get away, obviously. It says a lot that she doesn’t. Just swears as he carries her downstairs to the cheering group. Barnes and Cap finally stop sucking face for a moment to cheer their arrival.

The song changes and Natasha brightens up, starts singing. Voice throaty and smooth:

_“This hit, that ice cold, Michelle Pfeiffer, that white gold. This one for them hood girls. Them good girls straight masterpieces…”_

She pulls Clint into a slow samba and Barnes is grinding up against Cap’s crotch like rent is due tomorrow, and Tony knows for a fact that they pay no rent at all. Steve is blushing all the way up to his hairline but his hands are possessive over Barnes’ ass, squeezing and palming the muscle. Tony feels violated at having to even witness it.

So, yeah, that’s his first night out of the hospital wing in Wakanda. Not his finest hour. But then again, not his worst either.

The unfairness continues the next morning when Cap doesn’t even look tired. Not even a hint of droopy eyes or mad desire to drown in the coffee pot.

Steve sees him, turns back to his coffee and pastry, doesn’t say anything. His shoulders are up by his ears, so tense he’s almost vibrating.

Tony can be the bigger man. Maybe.

“So, I think I owe you a thank you. You know, for not letting me die.”

Steve looks at him then, face shuttered.

“I did it for Pepper.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

The silence stretches uncomfortably and Tony takes a sip of his coffee just to fill the moment with something, just to stop himself from fidgeting, and then:

“I wouldn't have let you die, Tony.”

“Yeah, okay. That’s cool.”

And then he has another one of his foot in the mouth moment, byt asking “What happened to Wanda?”

Steve’s eyes narrow, angry now. So, he has a tendency to put his foot in it when he’s nervous. It’s a character flaw. He’s working on it.

“I mean in Lagos she was barely able to contain that bomb, but now… She just held off a giant fuck-ass reactor.”

Steve puts down his cup, sighs.

“Bucky happened. I think that there was a part of her powers that she wasn’t letting herself touch after Pietro died. She took out the triggers from Bucky’s head and I think something unlocked for her.”

He smiles then, looking out into the jungle through the big picture windows, clearly thinking of a specific memory.

“It’s funny, almost like he has Becca back suddenly. Becca was his little sister.”

The change in the dynamics between the team disturbs him more than Tony wants to admit. Suddenly feeling wrong-footed, like he doesn’t know any of them. And Steve keeps talking, in his Captain America voice now. The voice of freedom and justice and the American Way.

“There is no place or time that I would have given him up. To anyone. Not the government, not the UN, not even you, Tony.”

He thinks of Pepper. Of her falling through the flames. Of that crystal clear moment when he knew that he’d lost her forever. The rage inside, oh, how he would have torn the world apart for her. Because of her.

He wonders what he would have done if Steve had ever asked him to hand Pepper over because of Extremis. If she’d been deemed a national security threat.

Well, he doesn’t wonder really. He knows. He knows what he would have done.

“You could have said, you know.”

“Said what?”

Now Steve seems wrong-footed suddenly and a tiny part of Tony feels a bit of schadenfreude in that. But only a little.

“That he’s your Pepper.”

Steve looks down, struggles with words. Rolling the pastry in his hands, flecks of the crust disintegrating onto the plate and into his fingers.

“Yeah. I guess he is.”

Neither of them says anything for a long time, but eventually Tony feels like he needs to fill the silence, even if what comes out of his mouth is more emotionally honest than he is ready for.

“Everything went to shit when she left.”

Steve’s smile is sad.

“But she’s back now, yeah?”

“Did you read that People magazine thing as well!”

Steve looks contrite and then nods and Tony feels himself flushing. It’s not like they don’t write shit about him all the time, but this, this is different. It means something to him for once.

“You know, most of what they write is total bullshit.”

“But she came after you?”

“Yeah. She did.”

“That’s good, right?”

Tony’s always hated that earnestness in Steve, the combination of a boy scout and a stubborn mule. But maybe he needs to be grateful for that, he wouldn’t be here otherwise.

When he goes out to get some air, Pepper is sitting by the pool. No, not sitting, lounging. Lounging like a goddess that she is. The wide brim of her hat shading her face while her long endless legs roast in the sunshine.

Tony just waves awkwardly, doesn’t know what to say to her yet. There is only so much emotional capacity he has for one day. So instead of doing the mature thing and making some inane small talk, he turns on his heels and escapes back into the medical wing. They probably will want to poke him some more. Maybe.

It’s two days later and they were supposed to be cool. They talked. Shared feelings. There had been a lot of manly shoulder slapping.

But Steve clearly isn’t cool with him. Not with Barnes around. He’s always there, situating himself between Barnes and Tony, herding Barnes like an overeager sheepdog away from Tony, and that bugs him. It shows no trust. The trust was supposed to be back.

A casual evening dinner. Great time to partake in some local wines and say “hey, no hard feelings” to Cap’s cybernetic boyfriend, but no. Steve’s there glued to Barnes’ side, making sure that he is nowhere where Tony happens to be. And Tony is a professional party goer! A pro at small talk and cornering slippery financiers.

Even Pepper manages to talk to him! She told Tony that she thanked him for rescuing him! Thanked him! Had an actual adult conversation without interference from Captain Sheepdog.

But he keeps trying. He sees Barnes going to the pool alone and Cap is nowhere in sight. Great. He gives it five minutes.

It turns out to be a terrible plan. Cap is indeed around and Tony’s eyeballs will never recover from seeing that much supersoldier ass on display. The pool is a public place for fuck's sake, but they are both surprisingly limber for their age.

Natasha just chuckles at him when she sees him near on running back into the common room.

“Everyone knows to not got to the pool when it’s Steve and Bucky’s “swimming” hour.”

He can practically hear the air quotes and tries to give her his best condescending smile. It works terribly and she just laughs at him evilly. She’s clearly still pissed off at him.

“Oh shut up, you and Barton are worse.”

Which makes her cackle even more.

Tony hates everyone.

It’s not that he wants to say anything bad to Barnes. He just doesn’t want Rogers to bear witness to his “I know you killed my parents and I nearly killed you, but I was tortured too so let’s be buddies so that this wonderful redhead lounging by the pool in a skimpy white swimsuit will date me again” speech. Tony is trying to turn a new leaf. Show he can be the better man.

Even if it is all in pursuit of Pepper.

It’s for true love.

Barnes should get that. He and Cap have that century of pining going on. And now they get to do indecent things to each other in swimming pools. Tony wants that too. Not with Cap. _Ew_. Not that Steve isn’t a fine specimen of manhood, but Tony has always been more partial to a redhead.

In the end, it just happens by accident. In the laundry room. Tony isn’t even sure what he’s doing in the laundry room. He shouldn’t even be aware of the existence of a place called ‘laundry room’.

But he is there and Barnes is there and Cap isn’t.

“So, hi there Tin Man!”

Barnes looks like he wants to run, or probably more accurately punch an escape route into the concrete wall. Or through Tony. If he has a choice Tony prefers it be the wall. Ideally neither.

“Wait!”

Barnes freezes. He’s holding a half-filled bag of laundry, a few items still hanging from the open dryer. Tony takes a breath. Starts again.

“I just, I know we didn’t get on to the best start.”

Barnes still doesn’t say anything. Jesus, does Tony need to do all the work here.

“You know, the Widow dumped all those HYDRA files on the net. Millions of terabytes of data. So, yeah, there were these videos. Encrypted. Hidden. But that’s not really a problem for me.”

“What videos?”

Barnes’ eyes narrow dangerously. It would be foolish to continue, really. Tony continues.

“Of the Winter Soldier procedure.”

“Don’t show them to Steve.”

There is a hint of panic on Barnes’ face now, and the metal arm whirs and clicks. Calibrating. Wildly, Tony wonders if it makes the noise on purpose. For intimidation.

Because it’s working.

“Whoa, no, no. That’s not...I mean I don’t say this often, but I was wrong, okay. I get that now. About how much control you had over what was happening to you.”

More whirrs and clicks of the arm. The fabric of the laundry bag is starting to look strained in between those metal fingers.

“I don’t want Steve to see those videos.”

“Yeah okay, I get that. I’ll get FRIDAY to scourge the net for you. I can do that, you know. I didn’t want Pepper seeing the files from Afghanistan either. So, yeah I totally get it.”

He’s babbling, he knows it, he’s trying to stop but can’t.

“You know Pepper? The hot redhead, really scary, you know, my ex. I’d like her to not be my ex, so you know, gotta make some changes.”

“Yeah?”

The hand releases the bag by a fraction and Barnes’ voice is more hesitant, less murder spree, and Tony finds this a positive development, so he carries on.

“You know, gotta change. Be a better man, deserve her. Not be a massive asshole. Or lie to her.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

They are silent for a long time, it makes Tony twitchy, but he fights the urge to fill the silence.

“Steve…I don’t deserve Steve.”

“Hey, no....”

He was going to say something nice but Barnes interrupts him.

“I don’t, but he’s still here. Pepper came after you, she’s still here too.”

Then he walks past Tony and out of the room. He didn’t die, he has to take that a victory.

The second time goes better. It’s no less cryptic, but at least Tony feels like he’s making an effort. This time, it’s over breakfast. They are the only ones there and Barnes barely twitches when Tony enters the room. He doesn’t move away as Tony pours himself a coffee.

“There’s this field of wildflowers on top of that mountain.”

“Okay.”

Is he supposed to say something? Maybe this is Barnes’ version of small talk.

“Me and Steve found it the other day.”

“That’s nice...”

“Pepper would probably like to see it.”

Then he wanders off with his bagel and coffee cup and hipster man bun. As Tony said, cryptic shit. But he does ask around, and yes, there is a beautiful wildflower meadow on top of the mountain.

So setting up a picnic and getting the chopper to drop Pepper off there without telling her. Good idea in theory.

In practice, he receives a harried Pepper still in her workout gear, annoyed like a wasp trapped in a glass jar. Her face does soften when she sees the meadow and the blanket and a bottle of Dom on ice. And what the hell, Tony has always loved the way Pepper looked and smelled and was post-workout.

He doesn’t call the chopper for a pick up for a good long while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers’ party songs in this chapter are:
> 
> [Dangerous - Akon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTT0-nYUwHo)
> 
> [Uptown Funk - Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPf0YbXqDm0)
> 
> Thank you for reading, comments and kudos are gratefully received! :)


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